A growing number of Chinese are hiring wedding planners, Chen Meiling reports. 

Qian Bingjie's dream of a white wedding came true－for her client, that is. The 27-year-old points out the color means purity in the West but has an ominous meaning in China, where it's associated with such events as funerals, and red is preferred for such happy occasions as weddings.

The bride says: "I want everything to be white so I can spot my groom at first sight."

Qian hung white organzas from the ceiling and decorated with artificial white poppies.

She also had to take phone calls from the bride's mother-in-law, who insisted the couple "will" have a red wedding.

Wedding planning was introduced from the West, and the sector is growing in China since 2004.

It's attracting graduates with degrees in architecture, interior design, environmental art and apparel design.

Lin Ying, principal of Weddings Beautiful China, a local branch of the US-based wedding-planning vocational institute, likens wedding planners to film directors. Their expertise should encompass customs, manners, floral arrangements, fashion, cosmetics, lighting, sound equipment and photography.

"Film directors maybe don't know how to paint but understand painting's style and aesthetics. They can also hire painters and designers to realize concepts. Wedding planning is the same," Lin says.

"You should take inspiration from each couple's romantic stories to create a unique wedding."

Inspiring entrepreneurs

Qian, who earned a university degree in finance, founded Ice Wedding in 2015. She took courses at the wedding-planning institute in 2017.

She has four stores in Zhejiang province's Wenzhou and Dubai. The flagship store in Wenzhou received about 60 orders a month.

She has received many moving thank-you letters from clients, including one longer than 1,000 words, she says.

One client wrote: "Your passion, hard work and positive attitude showed us the beauty of pursuing dreams."

She recalls planning a wedding for a bride who worked in New York and a groom who lived in Shanghai. They'd spent years apart before getting married.

Her team incorporated the skylines of both cities, including the Brooklyn Bridge and the Oriental Pearl Tower, in the decoration to tell their story visually.

Another couple met at a debate competition and first expressed their love under the stars. This inspired the team to decorate using castles and the cosmos as motifs.

"The greatest pressure for a planner is to ensure everything goes smoothly," she says. "The couple won't get a second chance."

Most of Qian's clients were born after 1990 and appreciate customized weddings.

She has learned how to predict their preferences based on their personalities.

"If a bride demands, 'Show me this!', I may recommend bold colors. If she gently asks her husband, 'Darling, which do you think is better?' I suggest pink and princess-related elements."

Her success led her alma mater, Wenzhou University, to ask her to perform a group wedding for 12 alumni couples in May.

Dream job

Zhang Liuyi became a wedding planner after hearing about the ceremony for Taiwan pop star Nicky Wu and Chinese mainland actress Liu Shishi in Bali in March 2016.

"Fresh flowers were shipped in. A whole team worked on the ceremony," she recalls.

"I thought it sounded fun."

She previously worked in a county-level agriculture bureau, mostly to please her mother.

"But I felt desperate during the first three months. The routine was boring. I envisioned spending my whole life there."

She quit her job and used her bonus to study at the vocational institute. She didn't tell her parents.

Zhang learned how to select suits and dresses. She visited high-end stores, attended weddings and she even worked as an unpaid intern.

She now works for a wedding-service company in Zhejiang province's capital, Hangzhou.

She signed her first wedding contract early last month.

"My parents accept that I've become a wedding planner. They know my decision wasn't impulsive," she says. "I didn't explain much. They agree because they see I'm happy."

Zhang will fight her first "battle" as "chief planner" following the recent Spring Festival, after working as an assistant.

She's nervous, she says, because she has seen how things can go wrong. One time, she joined a team to organize a wedding in a restaurant and found the stage was too large and the ceiling was too high.

"It took a long time to decorate. We had to order more materials, and I had to make it appear less messy," she recalls.

"There are frustrations, such as when clients ask for weddings that are beyond their budgets or when restaurants complain that we take too long to clean up afterward.

"You need true passion, or you'll often want to quit, but I'm happy when our efforts pay off and we finally see the lovers on the stage with beautiful smiles."

Practical matters

Zou Jiayi, founder of Do Private Wedding, takes a relatively practical approach.

"Weddings' price and scale don't reflect a couple's love," he says.

About 70 percent of his customers previously attended his former clients' weddings. Many became his friends.

"We send gifts to each other during festivals. I'm also willing to help them resolve marriage problems."

The planner based in Sichuan province's Zigong has organized weddings for the same groom three times.

The threshold for entering the industry is low, according to Zou.

"Many people think two workers, several pieces of cloth and some props are all they need," he says.

"But the effort that goes into a wedding is no less than that of a home renovation."

Zou incorporates elements related to the local culture in the ceremonies.

Paper lamps represent Zigong's status as a "city of lights". Crownblock shelves symbolize its history as a salt-production base, as the tool was used to drill brine from salt wells in the past. The curtains are adorned with calligraphic renderings of slogans miners shouted in the old days.

But he believes vows, rather than decor, are the most important part of a wedding.

"It's forbidden to copy lines from elsewhere," he says.

"Ninety-nine percent of weddings are similar. The difference is the individual stories of their love."

Contact the writer at chenmeiling@chinadaily.com.cn